With Skullgirls steadily nearing complete public consumption (it’s slated for release this week!), Mike Zaimont took the time to answer a few of our questions about the game. If you’d like to learn about his design goals, specific things done to make Skullgirls stand out from the crowd, long-term plans, and more… then read on!

Red Rick Dias, Shoryuken.com: In general, what can we expect from Skullgirls?

Mike ‘Mike Z’ Zaimont, Project Lead for Skullgirls: You can expect a pretty full-featured 2D fighting game. We’ve got story mode, arcade mode, a training room, extensive tutorials which go well beyond the basic “throw a fireball, nice!”, and, of course, online play using GGPO. We’re a really small team, so some of these don’t have quite as many options as we wanted initially, but since it’s downloadable it’ll be cheap – $15, less than a quarter of the cost of a disc-based game!

The basic game style is close to the Versus series, with tagging, assists, red health, push-blocking, OTG hits, snapbacks, DHCs, etc. However, we’ve done a number of things to add spice. Teams can be one, two, or three characters, with smaller team sizes getting health and damage bonuses in return for sacrificing some versatility. Players can create custom assist types – simply choose Custom, input the move you want as the assist, and that’s what you’ll get! Normals, specials, throws, dashes… any ground move besides supers can be chosen. There are also a number of system differences designed to help high-level gameplay such as allowing counters while air-blocking, protection from high/low unblockables and a unique infinite detection system.

I think it’s a very solid package for that price, and we want to release free patches to keep improving it in the future.

SRK: You’ve mentioned wanting to make Skullgirls more accessible than most games in the genre. Can you give us some examples of what you’re doing to make that happen?

Mike Z: There are a lot of things, but I guess the biggest thing would be those tutorials I mentioned. The goal of this tutorial mode is to make people better fighting game players, rather than simply pat them on the back after they learn specials or use basic game systems. We have 17 lessons, each with multiple parts, to teach you the basics of fighting games. And I do mean basic – we start with movement and jumping because, well, if someone has never played a fighting game before and buys this, they might not know that Up is how you usually jump.

From there, we introduce core concepts of the genre like blocking correctly, reacting to defense with mixups, recognizing and defending against tick throws, and punishing unsafe moves. To me, these are the things tutorials should be teaching players. Each lesson has text explaining the concepts of what we’re going to teach you, and we tried to make them as interactive as possible. Rather than just explain that a basic approach to defense is to mostly block low, then switch to high when you see an overhead attack coming, we give the player a chance to exercise that strategy versus an AI doing progressively harder mix-ups, to help them internalize the knowledge.

I think the next biggest thing would be our anti-infinite system. While I designed this as a balancing factor for high-level play, I think it will make the game a lot more fun for less-skilled players who wade into online matches because they won’t have to worry about just getting destroyed by some guy who knows an infinite and wipes them out in one touch. They may still lose, but at the very least they’ll probably walk away and feel like they at least learned something from the experience, instead of just feeling frustrated and helpless. And hopefully that’s enough to get them to keep trying and practicing.

SRK: What about the controls? It’s a subtle topic, but even seemingly minor things like how basic movement and throws are done can have a real impact.

Mike Z: There are a lot of little touches, fixing annoyances I’ve had with various games in the past, like a tap-to-set button configure available on the character select screen. As far as gameplay goes… we never require three buttons simultaneously, only two, and we don’t require them to be pressed on the exact same frame. We buffer airdash inputs, so pressing PP immediately after jumping will wait until the minimum height and airdash, rather than giving you a jumping attack by mistake. There are no input shortcuts, but all the moves are pretty easy to pull off, no pretzels or anything beyond ‘standard’ move motions are required.

We even simplified a lot of those – since LP+LK is Throw in Skullgirls, command throws are just QCT/QCB + Throw, rather than 360. There is one 360 in the game right now, as a super, but I added some tech that looks for 360s so you don’t need to worry about doing the motion quickly to avoid jumping. DPs are lenient so F,D,DF,F works, but if you want to differentiate between a QCT and DP you can use any Back direction before the Down to guarantee a QCT will come out even if you were holding Towards beforehand. And something that has always bothered me – if there are overlapping inputs, for example QCT+MP (fireball) and QCT+MP+MK (snapback), we allow the first few frames of the QCT+P to be kara-cancelled into the more complicated move in case the player didn’t hit the buttons at exactly the same time. There’s a lot more, but I should stop because I could go on about this stuff for hours.

As far as pad players go, it is a six button game so they need all the help they can get. Sorry, Fanatiq! :^) Since it’s possible to play a single character or a team of two, players can use smaller teams to limit the button combinations they have to worry about, by not having extra assists to call. There are also two unmapped buttons which can be macro’ed to any combination of the attack buttons. We let the player determine the mapping – on the button configure screen, you scroll down to the Macros area, press the un-mapped button and then press the attack buttons you want to map to it. You don’t have to press the attacks at the same time, and you can map any combination you desire, even all six at once.

SRK: You’re also an experienced tournament player and have been asking for input from your peers. Can you tell us about some things you’ve done to make Skullgirls fit into the competitive scene?

Mike Z: I’ve always wanted this to be a tournament-worthy game, one where your skill matters more than how easily you can abuse exploits or tier differences. We’ll see how the tiers resolve themselves, hah, but I’ve certainly tried for balance. Every character has a tool for most situations; some are worse than others, of course, like a zoning character should be disadvantaged if the opponent gets in, but I tried to make sure no character is completely helpless at any time. The infinite prevention system helps level the playing field by eliminating braindead loops, and there is protection against high/low humanly-unblockable setups which is one of the reasons custom assists are even possible. However, easily the most important thing for refining the game in a competitive setting has been playtesting.

From the first time the game was playable with just a team of three Filias, I have been having anyone and everyone I can convince to play it do so and give feedback. While we were adding characters I held weekly balancing/playtesting sessions with some of SoCal’s finest (and grimiest) players, from all games: Peacock incorporates advice from Cable players, Ms. Fortune was tweaked by Eddie and Carl players, I-No and Morrigan mains helped with Valentine, Lambda/Arakune players advised on Cerebella for some reason, etc.

I’ve taken Skullgirls to every tournament and event I’ve attended for over eighteen months, from SoCal Regionals to East Coast Throwdown to the past two Evos. I trucked it to James Chen’s apartment, I had Justin and Floe play, it’s been to the Comboratory, to many NorCal Installs, we’ve had it at the weekly Wednesday Night Fights for months, I talked to Keits about various visual issues, the ever-wonderful Majestros has offered advice on the tutorials, and I even tracked down the elusive Thongboy Bebop at his secret dirigible fortress and forced him to play on pain of listening to me talk about pie.

SRK: That’s quite the list! Was there any feedback taken from the wider community?

Mike Z: I regularly read all the forums I can, even the comments that make me cry (you know who you are), and I change things based on feedback daily and sometimes even hourly. Characters and gameplay systems have been regularly updated over the course of a public event, for example Parasoul underwent a major design overhaul based on feedback from day 1 of Evo 2011, and the changes were tested on day 2 and tweaked that evening.

Sure, I filter all the changes and make final decisions, but a huge amount of what this game is comes from community interaction. Things like having to hold Start for a bit to pause, rather than tap it, helps prevent accidental pausing in tournaments and came from a suggestion on SRK’s own forums. Since we first showed that at Evo 2011, it has been adopted by other companies. I am genuinely happy about this, too, because it improves the genre as a whole.

SRK: You were previously very active in BlazBlue, and even made its famous Tager/’Real Soviet Damage’ tutorial. After being so invested in that game, what prompted you to change your focus to Skullgirls?

Mike Z: I’ve always wanted to make a fighting game, and I’ve been working on what became the Skullgirls game engine in my free time for…well, it started in college, so over 10 years now. There was a lot of overlap with my MvC2, MvC3, Guilty Gear, and BlazBlue, uh, “golden years.”

I was working at Pandemic Studios full time, and I had just met Alex when that studio closed. My engine and his concepts were far enough along that I decided to focus on Skullgirls. The experiences I’ve had playing both older and newer fighting games formed the groundwork of my effort, and I might have continued to play BlazBlue but funnily enough working evenings and weekends for a few years doesn’t leave you much time to practice. So I only played what I already knew. (^.^)”

…plus, Tager never got that Sledge Break. :^|

SRK: Let’s move away from game play for a moment, and discuss the ‘world’ of Skullgirls; its art style and story. What can you tell us about these, and where can people go if they want to learn more about either the visuals or plot?

Mike Z: Story mode really isn’t my area of expertise, so I’ll tell you what Alex tells me.

Alex Ahad, Creative Director and Art Lead: There’s an artifact called the Skull Heart which has existed for thousands of years, and once every seven years it will grant a woman’s wish if their heart is pure. If not, their wish is twisted and they become a monster called the Skullgirl. A new Skullgirl has arrived on the scene! And everyone’s after her and/or the Heart.

Some of the characters want the Skull Heart to make wishes, some want to destroy it, a few want to destroy the Skullgirl, and others are moved by external forces. We only had time to do non-canon stories, but there’s a larger and more involved story mode we want to release in the future.

I wasn’t involved in the creation of story mode so it kind of took me by surprise when I first played it. They’re short, but there is an amazing amount of art and the plot isn’t tissue-paper thin (stolen car, anyone?) so I think people will enjoy them. There are a lot of possibly-future characters that people on the forums want to see and know more about, too.

SRK: Skullgirls is launching with a small roster of just eight characters. While the lower budget of a PSN/XBLA release obviously means we won’t get a thirty-plus character roster, can you explain why you’re going with this number?

Mike Z: It was really just a function of time, money and our desired level of quality. We might have been able to make more characters if we cut down on their number of moves and animations, but that’s not what we wanted. We realize people are pretty used to huge rosters now, but with our limitations we aimed for depth over breadth. There are a ton of ways to build your team with the different team sizes and custom assists, so I think we have at least the gameplay variety of a larger game.

That depth extends beyond the systems to the characters themselves. All of our characters are really strong and good at what they do, and have a lot of little technical quirks to exploit. It’s kind of a joke around the office that whenever we reveal a new one, people automatically say they’re “broken” because they have so many useful moves, and I guess people aren’t used to that kind of gameplay density in a single character. Even Double, who morphs into other characters, plays totally differently – she got completely new animated-from-scratch specials, throws, and supers, and some normals were reanimated because she doesn’t have the original character’s power.

When you get to creating larger rosters it becomes hard to do without clones, but of course the mecha-satsui-no-hado-palette-swapped-dark-sunburned-elemental-ghost-shin-robo characters need to have distinguishing characteristics. And that’s when things start to get mushy, because why bother creating someone who is just someone else with a slightly faster projectile? Obviously we’re looking to expand the game in the future and it’ll be a challenge to maintain that level of uniqueness, but we have concepts and gameplay ideas for a lot of future characters and think we’re up to the challenge.

SRK: What sort of long-term support can we expect, and on what general schedule? Will there be new characters? Bug fixes or balance updates?

Mike Z: We want to support the game for a long time with new features and updates, but we’ll see what we can actually do once the game is released. I guess a lot of that will depend on how well the game does, since the better we do, the easier it will be to convince people to let us continue to do it.

As you may have heard, submitting patches is expensive, so the patches will probably revolve around the DLC character release schedule, which we’re still working out. I wish I could give you more, so… I will say that we have started working on the first DLC character. She’s the one everybody wants… unless you happen to be a person who wanted someone else. :^)

SRK: Finally, the inevitable questions: When will Skullgirls be released, and what price point can we expect?

Mike Z: This was finally announced! April 10th on North American PSN, with European version landing in the following weeks. Worldwide on XBLA on April 11th. It will be $15 or whatever 1200 MS Points equals in your native currency.

You heard the man! Be sure to grab Skullgirls on your preferred platform as it becomes available, and check out the blood, sweat, and tears the folks over at Reverge Labs have put into crafting this unique fighter. Thanks again to Mike Z and Alex Ahad for answering our questions. We can’t wait to get our hands on your game!

“I think it’s a very solid package for that price, and we want to release FREE patches to keep improving it in the future.” – Mike Z

Already have been sold and have been hyped, but thats some icing on the cake right there!

Anonymous

“I think it’s a very solid package for that price, and we want to release FREE patches to keep improving it in the future.” – Mike Z

Already have been sold and have been hyped, but thats some icing on the cake right there!

http://twitter.com/Little_GotenSRK Little_GotenSRK

Free = My favorite word.

I’d easily pay for characters though. I’m just that hype.

Anonymous

You’ll HAVE to pay for characters. Characters won’t be free.

Gabriel González

Characters that have not been finalized and that will not be at least for another month since they started development of said DLC char last month and each character take between 2 and 3 months to be completed.

On the FREE side we can expect rebalance patches, upgraded online lobbies, in game move lists and other things that where not finalized do to time constrains and other other mechanics that had higher priority.

http://twitter.com/Little_GotenSRK Little_GotenSRK

Ah, forgot.

http://twitter.com/Little_GotenSRK Little_GotenSRK

Free = My favorite word.

I’d easily pay for characters though. I’m just that hype.

Anonymous

Good luck to this game selling well, not that it needs it from the look of things. I’m thinking the character is Squigly but I would like Minette to appear.

Anonymous

I hope its Squiggly and I hope she’s Dhalsim-like, hope she’s not like that girl with the cat skeleton staff in AH3 (I dont know her name dont wanna look it up either).

Jose Di Paola

Her concept art indicates a stance-based character, albeit one with a few long-range pokes.

“It’s kind of a joke around
the office that whenever we reveal a new one, people automatically say
they’re “broken” because they have so many useful moves, and I guess
people aren’t used to that kind of gameplay density in a single
character.

This is why I support Skullgirls, They are not afraid to make a character strong as much as they want them to be fair. People are so afraid of “Overpowered” characters that they never seen a character will good amount of tools.

Anonymous

There’s really no reason not to get this game, especially after reading this interview. Hype for tomorrow!

Anonymous

Not happy there is no moves list in game

Anonymous

Wow! Nice jab at Dudley’s SF3:3S storyline (I see what you did there).

I usually don’t pay attention to PSN release schedules, but I hope the game’s ready for me when that clock strikes 12.

http://www.facebook.com/DaBrutishOne Dwight Kirkpatrick

MAAAAAAAAN I was thinkin it was gonna be released tomorrow for XBLA…. *Profound…..Sadness…..*

Lol i was thinking the same thing too. Good thing my friend is getting it tomorrow for Ps3. Lol

http://www.facebook.com/DaBrutishOne Dwight Kirkpatrick

MAAAAAAAAN I was thinkin it was gonna be released tomorrow for XBLA…. *Profound…..Sadness…..*

http://www.facebook.com/DaBrutishOne Dwight Kirkpatrick

MAAAAAAAAN I was thinkin it was gonna be released tomorrow for XBLA…. *Profound…..Sadness…..*

Thomaz Barros

> the plot isn’t tissue-paper thin (stolen car, anyone?)

Are you dissing Dudley story? It makes sense. If you’re a world class boxer and some dude stole your fuckin’ 80′ muscle car , you would go until his house, and punch the living shit out of him until he gives your precious car back.
Not everyone needs a deep motive to enter an tournament

http://www.facebook.com/victoly Matthew Taylor

thin != bad

Dudley’s story is thin, but quite badass

http://www.facebook.com/victoly Matthew Taylor

thin != bad

Dudley’s story is thin, but quite badass

Jose Di Paola

Random Joe: “I want to enter.”

Shady Tournament Organizer: “Why? To rebuild your dojo? To demonstrate the worth of your martial art? To take revenge on your arch-nemesis?”

Random Joe: “Why the hell would I want to do that? I just want the prize money.”

Thomaz Barros

> the plot isn’t tissue-paper thin (stolen car, anyone?)

Are you dissing Dudley story? It makes sense. If you’re a world class boxer and some dude stole your fuckin’ 80′ muscle car , you would go until his house, and punch the living shit out of him until he gives your precious car back.
Not everyone needs a deep motive to enter an tournament

http://www.soundcloud.com/ZeroLovesDnB 00000000

Can I pay $20. The extra $5 is because, fuck it, SkullGirls is a legit product.

http://www.soundcloud.com/ZeroLovesDnB 00000000

Can I pay $20. The extra $5 is because, fuck it, SkullGirls is a legit product.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1341129325 Xavier D Culver

I would usually say something along the lines of scew you, but today we’re in the same page. Skullgirls is worth it

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_TIC7WNRSMFBSCLF6OR6JQJAAZA sb

i was ready to pay $30 i thought it wouldnt be no less than $20 didnt matter whatever the price it was bought sense last year

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_TIC7WNRSMFBSCLF6OR6JQJAAZA sb

i was ready to pay $30 i thought it wouldnt be no less than $20 didnt matter whatever the price it was bought sense last year

http://www.facebook.com/victoly Matthew Taylor

Something makes me feel warm and tingly inside knowing that we can take funny screenshots of inbetween frames.

http://www.facebook.com/victoly Matthew Taylor

Also, Dr. Subzero makes a guest appearance in game.

it’s AMAZING

Anonymous

” We only had time to do non-canon stories”

Well, shit.

Gabriel González

Hey it was either that or only have 6 characters (I prefer the the 2 extra characters).

Kier Arnold

Well, I’d rather have that than Soul Calibur V’s “One canon story that ignores 60% of the game’s roster and doesn’t bother developing all but two of the characters that do show up.”

This is a great interview. Mike really sells the game. But hell, I was buying it tomorrow anyway. A steal at $15, I doubt this game’s DLC character purchases will ever amount to a full-priced game. Comparing this to Capcom’s money-grubbing, content-locking DLC plans, I am proud to support every single piece of DLC these guys release. I want to see them make a lot of money on this game, because it has shaped up to be a product worth a hell of a lot more pennies than they are charging for it.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Korey-Mueller/632448489 Korey Mueller

This is a great interview. Mike really sells the game. But hell, I was buying it tomorrow anyway. A steal at $15, I doubt this game’s DLC character purchases will ever amount to a full-priced game. Comparing this to Capcom’s money-grubbing, content-locking DLC plans, I am proud to support every single piece of DLC these guys release. I want to see them make a lot of money on this game, because it has shaped up to be a product worth a hell of a lot more pennies than they are charging for it.

I am not a fan of dlc characters in most cases regardless of where they come from, but seeing as how this an indie game, I’m gonna allow myself to be hypocritical, and except the fact they are doing it. I mean, I know it’s contradictory to some extent, but I agree that Capcom is a whole different beast in this category, so people should lay off.

I am not a fan of dlc characters in most cases regardless of where they come from, but seeing as how this an indie game, I’m gonna allow myself to be hypocritical, and except the fact they are doing it. I mean, I know it’s contradictory to some extent, but I agree that Capcom is a whole different beast in this category, so people should lay off.

Moribund Cadaver

Actually, in the interest of realistic expectations the overall price for Skullgirls will be retail level or greater IF they manage to make all the characters they want to.

Generally speaking, the dream target is to have 24 characters, with a satrically reversed male to female ratio: in the case of Skullgirls, 16 female and 8 male. Since in the average fighting game, it’s usually 2/3rds male to female.

At a likely price of $4 to $5 a piece, that would add up over time.

Now, I’m not saying it’s not worth it. But it will be very hypocritical of people if they enthuse over paying five bucks for a character in Skullgirls while they castigated the rest of the industry for even making DLC at all, period.

In point of fact, fighting game characters represent a significant value. When you buy a game that has 20, 30, or 40 characters in it for $40 to $60, you are getting a big value. (Yes, Skullgirls is a big value at its price because its 8 initial characters are all richly designed. Nobody is arguing that.)

When you pay say, $5 for a fully featured DLC character, that’s still a good price because of just how much value you’re going to get out of it. This ain’t horse armor or gun skins people.

The real problem the last few years has been that most publishers and developers have been unsure how to approach scheduling and scale for DLC in fighting games. This has led to very haphazard results. For example, Ed Boon noted, in relation to MK9, that they could have/should have set things up to make many more DLC characters. Because MK9 was a big success, and the DLC characters did sell well. And the fans thought it was a fair price for them. But they, and the publisher, were unsure if it would work out at all.

People simply don’t want to believe that there could be any legitimacy behind Capcom’s budgeting for DLC in say, SFxT because it’s cool to hate Capcom (their fans have always done nothing but bitch at them, long before DLC was an issue), and people like to believe that a fighting game can include 256 characters for any retail price just because some fanboy wants to have something to whine about.

Hell, had SFxT’s DLC-gate never happened, Capcom’s plan and pricing for a DLC “expansion” to the game would have ended up being fair: 20 for a package of 12 characters is less than $2 a piece, cheaper than anyone else has done so far. That fact is mostly lost in the blizzard of bile and outrage.

At any rate, if people want to put their money where their mouth is, yes, you suckers should actually buy Skullgirls. Support the shit out of it and allow the developers to continue manufacturing characters and content (such as stages and the canonical story campaign w/ the Skullgirl boss).

I think if we’re lucky we’ll get to double the roster size. We haven’t settled on the price of DLC characters yet, but we still would not hit the price of a disc game with the numbers we’re talking about now.

I think if we’re lucky we’ll get to double the roster size. We haven’t settled on the price of DLC characters yet, but we still would not hit the price of a disc game with the numbers we’re talking about now.

I think if we’re lucky we’ll get to double the roster size. We haven’t settled on the price of DLC characters yet, but we still would not hit the price of a disc game with the numbers we’re talking about now.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_TIC7WNRSMFBSCLF6OR6JQJAAZA sb

i hope this game does super well and make alot of money they sure have mine hopefully well get a skullgirls 2 on disc meaning more everything

http://twitter.com/leohamasaki Leonardo Gomes

This will be amazing. I hope it’s released in the brazilian PSN tomorrow too… Can’t fucking wait to play this game!

http://twitter.com/PANDEMlC Nayr

If Mike reads this I’d like to let him know he was the main reason I got into fighting games. His Tager in BB(and his commentary on the BB dvds) made me want the game so bad and since then I’ve been playing almost every new fighting game. I’ve been following this game for what seems like 2 years now and can’t wait to finally get to play it soon. It looks great and I hope it does well. Congrats Mike!

http://www.facebook.com/Hellacious1789 Ryan Boyle

Just remember that Street Fighter 2 started out with 8 playable characters originally.

http://www.facebook.com/Hellacious1789 Ryan Boyle

Just remember that Street Fighter 2 started out with 8 playable characters originally.

http://twitter.com/lovethievery Mr. Irrelevant

Buy this game so they can make a PC version, please.

Anonymous

I wish this game had a more generic character. I know that might be going against the style of the game but I’ve never been one to play the wackier characters in fighting games and that’s all there is to offer here.

http://twitter.com/DevilJin01 Devil Jin

Well you’re just talking about looks really. The characters when you play them have their unique nuances but play style wise they have a lot of elements from familiar fighting game characters. Once you play the game you’ll feel those familiar styles with each character and get adjusted.

http://twitter.com/DevilJin01 Devil Jin

Well you’re just talking about looks really. The characters when you play them have their unique nuances but play style wise they have a lot of elements from familiar fighting game characters. Once you play the game you’ll feel those familiar styles with each character and get adjusted.

Anonymous

Definitely picking this up on XBLA. And I really do wish this game the best, Mike Z and the crew really deserve it

Anonymous

Definitely picking this up on XBLA. And I really do wish this game the best, Mike Z and the crew really deserve it

I really wanna support this game, because it’s a game from the community, I mean Mike Z is one of us. Unfortunately, my PS3 just bitch out, and went all ylod on me so I’ll be outta commission for awhile. But as I get back online, I’m all over this, because it looks damn good, and I would like to do my little bit to reward all of their hard work.

I really wanna support this game, because it’s a game from the community, I mean Mike Z is one of us. Unfortunately, my PS3 just bitch out, and went all ylod on me so I’ll be outta commission for awhile. But as I get back online, I’m all over this, because it looks damn good, and I would like to do my little bit to reward all of their hard work.

http://twitter.com/EDarkness British ED

Great work with Skullgirls. I will eventually buy it when it eventually turns up on the EU PSN store. Keep up the work with Skullgirls (Y)

http://twitter.com/EDarkness British ED

Great work with Skullgirls. I will eventually buy it when it eventually turns up on the EU PSN store. Keep up the work with Skullgirls (Y)

“When you get to creating larger rosters it becomes hard to do without clones, but of course the mecha-satsui-no-hado-palette-swapped-dark-sunburned-elemental-ghost-shin-robo characters need to have distinguishing characteristics. And that’s when things start to get mushy, because why bother creating someone who is just someone else with a slightly faster projectile .”
Thats not true. Blazblue and Guilty gear don’t have clones and they’re at about a 20-30 unique character roster. Same for Marvel vs capcom 2 and 3. Even though there may be some clones in the game, the originals weigh about 15-30 characters in overall

Having to confirm a full $15 dollar game with 8 characters because that rosters are hard for you to make and that you don’t like that theres at least one clone in every fighting game.. is a poor explanation… If anything, Double is a character based around all 7 characters like there was no effort put into it… You just tweaked her, put a bunch of used character moves, and added a few new/unused ones.. Like Seth from Street fighter 4. Thats a big comparison…

Literally, just say that its all about the effort and time and money… Don’t try to bag on other games with a poor explanation like that… Considering from someone who played Marvel vs Capcom, Blazblue, and Guilty Gear through his time…

Go ahead insulting and bagging on me if you’d like but in my opinion, i found that as a horrible explanation to why theres only 8 characters in the roster… Im still gonna buy Skullgirls though to give my honest impressions on the game..

1200+ hand-drawn, HD frames of animation per character drawn by a few people in a very very very small indie company. Not only that but playtesting and balancing. It takes nearly three months from start to finish for a single character to be ready for the game.

Deal with it.

Anonymous

solid comeback.
I respect Maman’s opinion, but he came across shitty. Also, he’s buying it anyway, so thats what matters.

Keep up the great work fellas.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SS4Y7H4VCHOHIGLMT7YT4EZI2U Tilopud R

Actually Double playstyle and strategy is nothing like the other characters. She plays like Oro in 3rd strike- Only the animations are used from other characters. She doesn’t have any actual tools or specials that the other characters have- the “recycled” things are only the animations in her normals. All of her specials and supers are totally unique to the character. She is not a mishmash of various characters nor is she a clone of the roster. Take a look at an Oro combo and a Double combo- their gameplay is very similar and how often do you hear anyone mention Oros gameplay? I don’t think theres been a character like that since 3S Oro.
That wasn’t even the explination as to why there are only 8. He mentioned the small team, limited time for (already pushed back) release date, taking the time to fully complete and animate each of the existing characters moves. When you play it and see that each character has an option for almost every situation amd witness how much work is put into the character it will make sense why there are 8 at launch. It won’t be long til we see the first DLC char- maybe a month from now since they’ve been working on her since February

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SS4Y7H4VCHOHIGLMT7YT4EZI2U Tilopud R

Actually Double playstyle and strategy is nothing like the other characters. She plays like Oro in 3rd strike- Only the animations are used from other characters. She doesn’t have any actual tools or specials that the other characters have- the “recycled” things are only the animations in her normals. All of her specials and supers are totally unique to the character. She is not a mishmash of various characters nor is she a clone of the roster. Take a look at an Oro combo and a Double combo- their gameplay is very similar and how often do you hear anyone mention Oros gameplay? I don’t think theres been a character like that since 3S Oro.
That wasn’t even the explination as to why there are only 8. He mentioned the small team, limited time for (already pushed back) release date, taking the time to fully complete and animate each of the existing characters moves. When you play it and see that each character has an option for almost every situation amd witness how much work is put into the character it will make sense why there are 8 at launch. It won’t be long til we see the first DLC char- maybe a month from now since they’ve been working on her since February

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SS4Y7H4VCHOHIGLMT7YT4EZI2U Tilopud R

Actually Double playstyle and strategy is nothing like the other characters. She plays like Oro in 3rd strike- Only the animations are used from other characters. She doesn’t have any actual tools or specials that the other characters have- the “recycled” things are only the animations in her normals. All of her specials and supers are totally unique to the character. She is not a mishmash of various characters nor is she a clone of the roster. Take a look at an Oro combo and a Double combo- their gameplay is very similar and how often do you hear anyone mention Oros gameplay? I don’t think theres been a character like that since 3S Oro.
That wasn’t even the explination as to why there are only 8. He mentioned the small team, limited time for (already pushed back) release date, taking the time to fully complete and animate each of the existing characters moves. When you play it and see that each character has an option for almost every situation amd witness how much work is put into the character it will make sense why there are 8 at launch. It won’t be long til we see the first DLC char- maybe a month from now since they’ve been working on her since February

You are correct, respect.
A game doesn’t necessarily HAVE to include clones to have a large roster (though it does tend to happen), so perhaps I phrased that poorly:To have a larger roster in the time we took to develop the game (under 18 months from start to finish) at the cost and quality we did it, we would have HAD to have palette-swap clones because there was no way to complete art for other characters without hiring more people. Even Double was a stretch to fit in the schedule, and I am against doing MK-style clones…so this is the roster size. Each new character would delay the release by 2-3 months.How’s that? Less dumb sounding, I hope. :^)

You are correct, respect.
A game doesn’t necessarily HAVE to include clones to have a large roster (though it does tend to happen), so perhaps I phrased that poorly:To have a larger roster in the time we took to develop the game (under 18 months from start to finish) at the cost and quality we did it, we would have HAD to have palette-swap clones because there was no way to complete art for other characters without hiring more people. Even Double was a stretch to fit in the schedule, and I am against doing MK-style clones…so this is the roster size. Each new character would delay the release by 2-3 months.How’s that? Less dumb sounding, I hope. :^)

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1430386161 Michael Maman

Thanks for the clear explanation.. I really do apologize for the post i’ve come up with.. And im really hyped and looking forward to skullgirls..

Thank you Michael Zaimont and your developers for the hard effort,cost, and time you put into Skullgirls.. I’ll pick this up tonight and hopefully enjoy it with my brothers ^_^

And i understand your honest opinion..
Again, i apologize if the post was offensive or insulting in any form or shape that goes against your hard-worked masterpiece. All i have to say is: Thank you ^_^

You are correct, respect.
A game doesn’t necessarily HAVE to include clones to have a large roster (though it does tend to happen), so perhaps I phrased that poorly:To have a larger roster in the time we took to develop the game (under 18 months from start to finish) at the cost and quality we did it, we would have HAD to have palette-swap clones because there was no way to complete art for other characters without hiring more people. Even Double was a stretch to fit in the schedule, and I am against doing MK-style clones…so this is the roster size. Each new character would delay the release by 2-3 months.How’s that? Less dumb sounding, I hope. :^)

You are correct, respect.
A game doesn’t necessarily HAVE to include clones to have a large roster (though it does tend to happen), so perhaps I phrased that poorly:To have a larger roster in the time we took to develop the game (under 18 months from start to finish) at the cost and quality we did it, we would have HAD to have palette-swap clones because there was no way to complete art for other characters without hiring more people. Even Double was a stretch to fit in the schedule, and I am against doing MK-style clones…so this is the roster size. Each new character would delay the release by 2-3 months.How’s that? Less dumb sounding, I hope. :^)

Something inside me tells me this is the brand new start of an epic franchise, and hell I don’t wanna miss it. The game looks good and there’s a lot of spirit, effort and love put into it; can’t wait to hit the training mode.

My only concern is if there will be enough online activity since I don’t have any local scene. I really hope so.

Pablo Valls Arlandis

Something inside me tells me this is the brand new start of an epic franchise, and hell I don’t wanna miss it. The game looks good and there’s a lot of spirit, effort and love put into it; can’t wait to hit the training mode.

My only concern is if there will be enough online activity since I don’t have any local scene. I really hope so.

Pablo Valls Arlandis

Something inside me tells me this is the brand new start of an epic franchise, and hell I don’t wanna miss it. The game looks good and there’s a lot of spirit, effort and love put into it; can’t wait to hit the training mode.

My only concern is if there will be enough online activity since I don’t have any local scene. I really hope so.

Anonymous

Yes! Quality over quantity!

I’m gunna be in the lab with so many assists~

TEAM SURGICAL, TEAM PAINCOCK & TEAM JIGGLY~

http://twitter.com/windsagio windsagio

Still in the end another practice-mode game, I think anything else could be forgiven, excepting that.

Anonymous

Are you always bitter, frustrated and pessimistic about… everything?

http://twitter.com/windsagio windsagio

only very specific things :p

Oh wait sorry, my entire identity is based around the fraction of posts I have on a particular website about a particular game. I actually cry myself to sleep every night, cursing because Skullgirls ruined my life.

Now that you reminded me, I have to go on another crying jag I hope you’re happy with yourself!

Gareth Roberts

get a friend to play it with?

http://twitter.com/windsagio windsagio

Friends? What are these things you call… friends?

http://twitter.com/blk_brotha Ahrmon Rudolph

Great interview with Mike Z. and Alex Ahad. I am looking forward to buying this game. I see he used the Tragic Triangle sacrificing time and making a good and cheap game. Due to the budgets on what he said is true you would delve into investing more time and money. Good shit a job well done my man and thanks for the advice back in the very 1st SCR.

peace out cUDDY

http://twitter.com/blk_brotha Ahrmon Rudolph

Great interview with Mike Z. and Alex Ahad. I am looking forward to buying this game. I see he used the Tragic Triangle sacrificing time and making a good and cheap game. Due to the budgets on what he said is true you would delve into investing more time and money. Good shit a job well done my man and thanks for the advice back in the very 1st SCR.

peace out cUDDY

Anonymous

Good interview! Mike is a really dedicated and nice guy… met him last year at EVO and was a breath of fresh air and a pleasure to talk to.

I really like the game and it feels great… Indie game development is no easy thing these days, and they pulled it off. I hope others like it as much as I do and it becomes a rousing success.

You really cant beat the price at $15 and if you don’t at least try the demo, well you cant say you weren’t afforded the chance to try it.

Looking forward to what the future holds with this game… I think he has a great base model to build from… quality over quantity and with a finger on the pulse of the FGC.

Anonymous

Good interview! Mike is a really dedicated and nice guy… met him last year at EVO and was a breath of fresh air and a pleasure to talk to.

I really like the game and it feels great… Indie game development is no easy thing these days, and they pulled it off. I hope others like it as much as I do and it becomes a rousing success.

You really cant beat the price at $15 and if you don’t at least try the demo, well you cant say you weren’t afforded the chance to try it.

Looking forward to what the future holds with this game… I think he has a great base model to build from… quality over quantity and with a finger on the pulse of the FGC.

grezex29

Hmm…well, I’m thinking…pass.

Anonymous

Finally a proper long interview, cheers!

Anonymous

Great interview. I felt fighting games have been missing the boat on the tutorials for years. They try and cater to new players with input shortcuts, but what new players really need are proper tutorials. They don’t want shortcuts. They want to learn the game.